July 23rd, 2026
The gut microbiome changes with age in ways the provoke chronic inflammation and tissue dysfunction. Animal studies demonstrate that restoring a youthful gut microbiome to old individuals extends life and improves health. Thus we would expect favorable changes to the gut microbiome to be reflected in any good alternative measure of aging, such as aging clocks. With that in mind, in today's open access paper the authors report on the development of algorithms based on gut microbiome composition that are predictive of epigenetic clock results. This allows identification of specific microbial species that may be harmful or helpful in the matter of the pace of aging.
The eventual destination for this field of research is to produce probiotic or other forms of therapy that can permanently adjust the composition of the gut microbiome in a controlled way. Reduce the numbers of bad species, increase the numbers of good species, and do this for at least hundreds of different species. At present a number of approaches can rejuvenate the gut microbiome with a single treatment, but in an uncontrolled way. For example, fecal microbiota transplantation from a young donor. Animal studies show that fecal microbiota transplantation produces sizable benefits, but for human medicine, given the present regulatory environment, widespread use of such a gut microbiome altering therapy is only likely given complete control over both the contents of the therapy and the outcomes of the therapy.
